Bulletins and News Discussion from September 2nd to September 8th, 2024 - We Love Our Trans Comrades - Chemicals of the Week: Estrogen and Testosterone

Oh hey, it's just some bit of small news that are news nevertheless. Bit of a longpost too.

So my University will be holding elections throughout this week

We all know universities have always been heated political battlegrounds. In some countries, under authoritarian regimes, political activity and formation in universities is heavily restricted and is almost illegal, like in the United States . In other countries, like in the hellhole that is Argentina (MY HELLHOLE), surprisingly it's allowed for a wide range of political parties and organisations to participate in democratic elections to elect representatives and authorities whitin their respective universities. Of course, it goes without saying that elections never take place in universities of authoritarian nature like those which are deemed "private institutions". It seems that Capital ain't interested in democracy after all.

Anyways, my university in particular belongs to the much larger University of Buenos Aires, which has a lot of ups and downs. Our elections are celebrated among students to elect other students into three different bodies, all fully validated by the State and the University itself. So, one of the elections will send student representatives to a Junta which itself is made up with said students, professors and other academics. There's one Junta specifically for each career, in my case, and since I'm studying History, my vote goes for the representatives in the History Junta. Others will emit a vote for their representatives in the Anthropology Junta, the Philosophy Junta and so on. These Juntas deal with everything related to their careers. The other body is the Board of Directors, once again a number of students (often a minority) is sent in representation and will be able to cast a vote during the internal elections they have to choose the University's main authorities.

None of that is interesting. The real battleground is the third body that is up for grabs: the Student's Centre. Basically, it's a student-driven government body that is tasked with defending the interests of all students. Historically it has been a very contested battleground for many parties, lots of militants everywhere (from all parties) began their careers in their Student Centres (if they even attended to a State University). It's an important body, during heated political moments it becomes the framework for mobilisation and organisation. For example, pre-COVID years saw several attempts to reduce "costs" in education, as a response, quite a lot of student centres took their universities literally by storm, declared them "Tomadas" (Taken) and ran the entire thing by themselves. Sounds familiar?

At the same time, the Centre offers services like operating the university's buffet, support for students, study groups, etc. Not a lot, but can have an impact in the students day to day life.

So the elections for the Centre always get spicy. This time around, the Centre is under control by the Peronist coalition, which groups several peronist, kirchnerist (soccdems) and some like-minded independent groups. Like all peronists they suck massive amounts of ass, because they negotiate with power, not fight it. First, they're ideologically aligned with the authorities. Second, they've been around since like 2022 or so and so far their management has been bad. We've lost hours from our schedule thanks to their passiveness, meaning that the university opens later (from 7am to 8am) and closes earlier (from 23pm to 22pm), everything had to be modified to fall into this new scheme and many students got fucked, because almost everyone who studies here is a student AND a worker at the same time. They also allowed for the History program to get butchered by removing certain subjects (made them optional) and replacing them with pseudoscientific shite like psychoanalysis . So, I will not vote for these fucking losers.

As for the opposition, it's made up of about three Trot orgs (Because OF COURSE IT IS LIKE THAT ) and one or two extra orgs I don't know. As for the Trots, one has absolutely no chances (In typical Trot fashion it used to belong to a much larger party, but their sixty five million years old leader broke away from them and formed their own marginal group), the other has little chances (It's filled with TERFs, or at least, used to. Regardless they're all 100% insufferable) but this one has some national projection (They even participate in national elections as Nuevo MAS). Finally, there's the big Trot front that is Frente de Izquierda (good Trots) which, in itself, is made up by four Trot parties. I know quite some people who their militant life for them and they're pretty cool, I have a lot of respect for some of them.

So yeah, I'll be voting for the good Trots. Still, I consider myself to be a Communist yeah but also Independent as I don't campaign for a party. Therefore, I am not a Trot. I also know some of their candidates in the ticket and I get along with them well.

If you guessed that most of the political struggle comes from the Trots infighting you'd be right. There was a pretty big incident years ago where a group of Nuevo MAS militants got involved in a massive brawl with militants from the Frente de Izquierda that even got nationwide TV coverage. It's still spoken about after all these years, it constituted a monumental moment in our University's lore lmao. Still, it's pretty emabarrasing. These days this kind of shit doesn't happen, but there's always heated discussions between the two as both are apparently interested in forming a single ticket, but Trots be Trotinn', they never agree on anything and go separate ways (then they get eaten by the Peronists).

The University is also filled with political propaganda, mostly coming from Nuevo MAS militancy. All walls, and I mean ALL WALLS have political ads. It's almost unbearable to watch. I've included an example in the spoiler below. Also, as soon as you come in from the main entrance you get jumped on by militants asking you questions and trying to convice you to vote for them lol. It's very amusing for me, others feel really threatened about all this.

I wish the good Trots win (they have a good chance), I'd rather have them instead of the bootlickers in power. I want them to be completely insufferable to those in power.